News

20.06.2013

Competitiveness working group created under South East Europe 2020 growth strategy, at RCC-hosted meeting in Sarajevo

SARAJEVO – A working group of regional experts on competitiveness was created in
Sarajevo today, under the South East Europe 2020 (SEE 2020) growth
strategy, at a meeting hosted by the Regional Cooperation Council (RCC).

The competitiveness dimension
contained under the sustainable growth pillar of SEE 2020 will work to improve
regional value chains in the Western Balkans, i.e. the ability of the countries
to participate in different stages of manufactured goods production.

The meeting presented an
outline of inputs for the strategy and agreed to have the
first draft of SEE 2020 ready next month.

“The RCC will be focusing fully on
SEE 2020”, said Goran Svilanovic, RCC Secretary General, at the opening of the
meeting.

“We will work closely with national
administrations in preparing and implementing the strategy. We are also
thankful to the European Commission (EC) and RCC Board for support.”

“National administrations will have a
key role in making the strategy a success, which will be assessed also through
EC progress reports. Deputy prime ministers in charge of European integration
and line ministries will be the ones directly responsible for ensuring the
region’s ability to respond to the economic crisis and globalization
challenges.”

“They will be instrumental in
preventing a scenario by which a county joins the EU and is immediately in need
of a bailout. The progress will be reviewed every six months, similar to
EU-level evaluation through the European semester.”

The RCC Secretariat and external advisors provided participants with a
proposal for the strategy methodology and a schedule to guide the SEE 2020 process
until the end of the year, by which time the strategy is to be adopted.

The meeting agreed on roles and
responsibilities of national administrations and regional partners in the
adoption, implementation and monitoring of the SEE 2020 strategy.

“We believe that our work on SEE 2020 will demonstrate that the region
is ready to cooperate and join efforts in shaping its future, and confirm its
main common goal: integration with the EU ‘family’,” said Hamdo Tinjak,
Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Relations of Bosnia and
Herzegovina, who co-chaired the meeting.

Secretary Tinjak emphasized the importance of aligning the national
with the regional planning within the scope of the EU’s Instrument for
Pre-accession Assistance (IPA) II programme of financial assistance to
enlargement countries.

“The Ministry will therefore continue
to provide full support and contribution to SEE 2020.”

The meeting gathered representatives of
economic teams and dimension coordinators for SEE2020, national IPA
coordination officers, European Commission, external advisory team, and
international and regional partner organizations.

The ministers of Western
Balkans economies adopted a set of regional and national targets in November
2012, to be reached by 2020. Consequently, a broad and consultative process has
been initiated by the RCC Secretariat to develop the SEE 2020 strategy and
action plan by November 2013. The strategy is based on five pillars:
integrated, smart, sustainable, and inclusive growth, and good governance for
growth. The basic goal of SEE 2020 is to improve
living conditions and bring back in the region’s focus competitiveness and
development of each country and the entire region. In that
sense, the document leans onto the EU strategy Europe 2020. The most important
SEE 2020 targets include: employment growth rate in the region by 12%, increase
in mutual trade by 230%, and the rise of the region’s GDP from the current 38%
to 46% of the EU average.